


process to rebuild

by eldritchbee



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Found Family, Gen, Healing, Mutilation, Not Canon Compliant, Robot/Human Relationships, Robots, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 08:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13186554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritchbee/pseuds/eldritchbee
Summary: They all feel like they're missing something, in the time between coming to Jabberwock Island and waking up. Kazuichi gets to work on something he feels is important in the meantime. Alternatively: Kazuichi builds Chiaki a robot body, and he and everyone else try to come to terms with their past and their future.





	process to rebuild

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if DR3 was out when I wrote this, but it was certainly written before I even considered watching DR3 at all so... very non-canon compliant thanks to DR3. Unless you pretend Robo-Nanami was on that boat in the end, which I absolutely do.
> 
> Minor shipping references but nothing major enough to tag. Canon typical violence / mutilation refers to how I imagined the DR2 kids bodies looked from Years Of Despair.
> 
> Anyway.

It’s only taken him a year to get back into the swing of things.

(A year to remember, even if only faintly, like it’s all at the tip of his tongue. He know the others are starting as well, somehow his hands made a doll, a small robot of Nidai that he could remember on the edges of his mind and Owari had lifted it immediately from him and cried.

Sonia, who sat nightly by the machine so much so that they had taken to leaving blankets and pillows was starting to mumur things about explosions, about food, about bright pink and green, about…)

It’s only taken a year, and help of the Future Foundation to keep them comfortable, give them hope while they tried to rebuild themselves without the help of a computer program. A year, and the feeling that someone was missing, and the fog that they all tried to clear from their heads before he’d taken on something more complicated than a Nidai doll or a boat motor or the various vehicles they kept around the island.

He’d built robots before, but it felt like a million years instead of just one when he felt out the familiar parts.

(He was missing three fingers from his times in Despair, it amazes him that he was able to build the monokuma-bots with only seven because now he feels so clumsy. It takes him twice as long to finish a project, and he doesn’t know how this new one will go. A larger endeavor of Hope than he ever believed.)

***

“Izu-Hinata. You have any idea how to get a file back once it’s deleted? Like, once it’s been deleted for a  _long time_?”

“Thought we gave up on forcing that time back.”

“No no man it’s like, a  _program_ , came before us I think. Like the one we made of… well  _her_ , but different.” He glances up only slightly, jittery over the memory of Junko that came back. He notices Izuru-no Hinata has started to cry and something clicks in his own mind.  _Oh right_ , he thinks, but the details don’t come. “So, can you?”

***

(When they all woke up, it was like that time in Despair was wiped away. Like they’d returned to a time before it had happened, before Hope’s Peak at all. It lasted only a second, but the confusion persisted even now.

It felt like they’d lived two lives, and perhaps that’s because they had.

He was missing several teeth, found on a line around Sonia’s throat. She had bite marks all over her skin and he had scars and a constant pain in his thigh and fingers from a knife driven into his thigh. It took him a while to remember he’d cut off his fingers himself, at the height of Despair, wanting to ruin his talent. It takes him longer to remember the time they all sat around and watched the School Life Of Mutual Killing. They took bets, no money but a promise of added despair.

He and Sonia still turn away from each other when they see each other.

Owari counts her own ribs sometimes.

Kuzuryuu wears an eyepatch, but sometimes he lifts it up to pick at the hole underneath.

Izuru-no Hinata, still needs to isolate himself sometimes, and Souda wonders how bad it must be for him. It’s like he has two personalities, both at war, and he slips up, falls backwards more than anyone else. “It’s a process,” he tells them as Hinata when they fall back, trying to instill Hope back into their bodies.

“It’s a process,” they take turns telling Hinata, when Izuru has started to show in the shade of his mind and caused him Despair, remember the murders the tortures and his own sick, high humor being covered in blood. Remembering his time as Junko Enoshima’s right hand.

Souda wonders if he’s doing this more for Hinata than anyone else, though everyone felt some missing link it was Hinata who’d felt it the worst. Who’d drawn their attention, even at the beginning when they all woke up and looked around. “But where’s–?” but the name was lost with everything else.)

***

Souda builds.

He does not lose himself in the project like he would, both Before and During the Despair. He takes meals with everyone, sits back up against one of the pods and tries not to look Sonia in the eye while she does the same, bothers Hinata when the guy needs a more lightened mood.

But also he builds.

His hands smell like metal and grease, and his nails are perpetually dirty with gunk under them. When he finishes the skeleton, he badgers Hinata (Izuru?) for the program.

(For a while he thinks he’ll lose Hope, Hinata cannot grasp it, there’s something missing, a memory that would help locate what’s missing. Without that, what does he have?

An empty skeleton. Another empty body among the rest of the empty bodies they spent their days trying to revive.

Futile.)

Futile.

(Perhaps Junko Enoshima was correct.)

“Don’t say that,” Sonia says, and her voice has been gaining in strength. There’s a queenliness that he’d believed she’d lost, and he takes this as a command. “Don’t you dare. Remember, it’s a process.” She puts a hand on her hip and points him down while they’re surrounded all by their comatose friends. “I don’t intend to allow you, or any of us to give up so easily.”

“Ahhh, Sonia, I love it when you demand the best of me,” he teases, half serious. “I’m so full of hope and–” she kicks him away from all his injuries and pains.

“Be serious.”

“Fine.” (She’s tearing up again. Tearing up and now so is he, biting his lip and looking away. He doesn’t mention the futility and irony of a robot skeleton when they can’t find the program that belongs in there.) “Fine. Sorry.”

***

(Sonia had lost her kingdom, she pushed the button herself. Boom. Gone. Back then she’d giggled and wept and screamed and threw things at whomever tried to approach her.

She would lean back sometimes and ask them what it was like to be serial killers. She’d claw at her arms sometimes. 

She’s missing tufts of hair, he knows that some of the bite marks on her are his, there is more and more and more. Somehow, upon waking, she’s been the most resilient. She looks back on what they’ve done and says it won’t destroy her, demands that it won’t destroy anyone. When Despair comes she claws her way back, holding tightly to one of them as they mutter their group reassurances.

No one asks or knows what was left of Novoselic, but it’s undeniable that she’s rules the island with an iron fist of Hope.)

***

It’s Kuzuryuu who helps look for a solution, surprisingly. He folds his arms across his chest and scratches under his eyepatch with one hand. “You’re so fucking stupid. I called the Future Foundation guys and asked for a hacker or whatever. Why didn’t you think of that first?”

He laughs nervously, scratching the back of his head. “Are you sure about that?” (They’ve been trying to get on without the help of these people who, rightfully, feared them. Wanted them to die. Tried so hard to prove they can heal and rebuild by themselves that they hadn’t even entered his mind for this project.)

“What’s the worst they could say? Fuck off?”

(That’s not the worst and they both know it.)

***

(Somehow when he woke, Kuzuryuu wasn’t surprised by the hole where his eye once was. What did shock him was Peko’s absence, Souda and Owari had to drag him away from her pod before he broke his fingernails on the glass.

For the first month he wouldn’t leave the room were the bodies were held. He demanded aid, the best medicine and programmers could work on.

They were trying. They were trying.

He understood now.)

***

They come, and still for a long time nothing is solved. He still works. Polishes and shines and helps Hinata search (he’s desperate now, Hinata, they’re remembering more and more but there’s still so much).

Owari and Sonia and Souda put together a party, an anniversary, a mourning and a celebration for Hope.

(Owari came out nearly starved, she could count her ribs from under her shirt. She was scarred with brittle body, letting it waste once the soldiers of despair she and Nidai trained were let loose on the world. She is pleased now, and likes to mention she’s nearly back to her normal appetite.)

One year turns to two.

Souda takes a break.

***

Hinata comes to him one day with one word. “Nanami.”

(“What?” Souda asks. “Who?”

“I don’t know,” Hinata returns. “Nanami”.)

***

The radio they keep is telling them that the world is rebuilding, the mourning is not over but it moves forward. They all smile in relief and agree, “It’s a process.”

Days pass. The Future Foundation comes every so often, now able to tear away from their work to check the pods, see what they can do. The skeleton of the robot is constantly hooked up to a computer searcting for a program. A deleted file.

Months. 

***

(His fingers work to shine and oil the skeleton body. He has been given the resources for a skin, but decides to wait. None of them can yet grasp what the skin should look like. But, he thinks it won’t be long.

Months.

Maintenance check, he tests reflexes and mechanics, make sure it’s all so well oiled when the cool metal fingers touch his knee where the old wound still hurts sometimes. There are lights on, sounds of whirring, warming up and Souda has to sit back.

It doesn’t occur to him to call for anyone else until it-no, she touches her hands to her chest.

He’s so excited that when he bites his lip his teeth slice through. 

It’s different than when he would do it in Despair.

His mangled fingers go to cover his bleeding mouth. “Is it… Nanami?” he asks.

The skeleton head tilts to a side.)

***

“Yes?”

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted january 29, 2015 on tumblr


End file.
